Title: Eremidia: The Astral PlaneAlternative Title: Another Eremidia Dungeon 2Devname: AED2Developer: Theodoric / TheoAllen / TheolizedRGSS3Genre: Dungeon Crawler, RPG, Shonen-esque (R13+)Check out our sibling project too
Introduction :
This project is planned for a continuation of my previous project. Unlike the previous project, this is not a demonstration of my system, but I build it purely as a game itself. Also as a medium for my writing exercise. The story telling might be a little weird, but eh, at least I tried

The Story :Important note!The story contains a spoiler of how the ending of my previous project. So, open at your own risk!

Three young people bravely explore an unexplored ruin called the Skyward Temple. It is an abandoned temple known well as the Temple of the Dragons, and is located in the Eastern Realm of Eremidia. In order to capture the high-value artifact Skyglyph. After some fierce battles during their exploration, they managed to reach the last floor just to find out that the Skyglyph was a fake. They were being trapped by a sealing magic that threw them off into another world, Astral Plane.

They found them self in a completely different world. Wandering aimlessly without a clue where the are going. Until they stumbled upon a sanctuary where some living creatures lives. Not going to take a risk, our trio decided to stay on the sanctuary helping people while trying to find a way to get out from that place. Because the world within Astral Plane is not like a walk in a park

-- The world building is getting rewritten --

The Characters :

Soleil Alfred
Key signature : High-burst damage, fire, slash, meleeReference : The Sun
A hot blooded boy that often lose his temper over a thing. Always eager to fight, and does not really have fear. Granted, he often can't read the situation he is in

Stella Cornelia, (No, she's not JKT48 member)Key signature : Ranged, guns, explosive, agileReference : The Star
A self-proclaimed master of marksman. Ironically, her speed is better than her accuracy. She doesn't have any experience in raiding dungeons yet. Sometimes, she always fight with Soleil just because a little thing. Her inability to understand a complex thing especially everything within the Rift made her lose herself.

A NEW CASTTerra ErdeKey Signature : Impact, team defense, high aggroReference : The Earth
-- Her story and stuff are getting brainstormed --

Gameplay : (where the focus happens)

The gameplay is a minor tweak from the previous project. Newly experimental features I'm working on, namely Two Rows Battle System and Field effect. Before going further, I'd like to explain the gameplay from my previous project that brought into this project

Free turn battle : For a strategic purpose, you're allowed to pick which character would you want to act first. Like buffing the party before dealing the damage. Using this sistem means render Agility useless, thus I don't use agility system in this game

TP system : Instead of limited MP use, the game use TP sistem where each character has 50 max TP, gain after attack and receive damage. You can use skill as much as you want as long as you have TP and the skill isn't in cooldown.

Now, the something new from this project

Two Rows Battle System :

Characters that placed in first and second index will be considered as a front line character. And for others, it's a back line. Every character has a different skill set when they're switched to the different position.

Most of the front line skills are damaging type of skill. While the back row skills are mostly supportive.

The important part of the this new system is that the back row character can not attack. However, they have an alternative attack skill that gives them an unique effect. And if they want to deal damage, they need to use their damaging back row skills (which mean TP is used), and that if they have one

Characters that are in the back line will less likely to get attacked, and will be granted a small HP regeneration. So it's a good practice to swap your character when one of the front line character is in pinch

Field Effect :
Field effect are universal buff effect. Each character has field effect skill that grants a boost or effect to the enemy. However, you can not stack a different field effect. You can only use one at the time. You can only cast field effect when the character is in the back row.

Skill Level system :
Each skill has level. You gain skill point each level up. The goal is to make the player curious to unlock the skill and upgrade it if it will be their quality of life during the battle. I don't have an experience how to balance this stuff though. But I guess worth to try

The use of TP instead of MP opens up a whole new battle strategy.
And the change of skills from switching rows looks fun too.
Love the funky music!

I have an idea. How about letting the frontliners act twice per turn?
2 characters act twice per turn. That's equal to 4 characters act once per turn. (plus the back row character, that's like 5 party members)

I've downloaded the prequel. Gonna play it during holiday.
(after that, I'll play this one)

This is unplayable just fyi
Act 2 times a turn sounds like an idea. Let see if I won't make it too broken (because that what happened in prev project lol).

EDIT: Alright, act two times for front row does seem to improve a bit the satisfaction and give more reason to put a character in front row a bit longer. Now I'm thinking to balance each skill proportion now

Alright, act two times for front row does seem to improve a bit the satisfaction and give more reason to put a character in front row a bit longer. Now I'm thinking to balance each skill proportion now

Update!
After trying to work on first encounter troop, I realized that giving action two times, it's either
> Too easy, because enemies would die almost without making move
> Too slow, I buffed the enemies so that they wouldn't die fast. Turned out battle took longer because it also means 2 times longer playing animation. 2 times you need to selecting action (especially when u need to select skill again).

I'm rolling back to one time act, I just need to design an enemy that would suit best to kill by 2 frontliners alone. hmm ....

The different rows remind me of an old game called ogrebattle. It was different in that you had very little direct control over combat but you could setup your troops in complimentry groups. Ogrebattle had a lot of troops so there were lot of combinations. Its worth a playthrough.

For 3-4 characters i could see this still being a fun mechanic to make battling almost like a puzzle.

Yep, finally someone get the idea the system I'm trying to build. I'm playing around the element effectiviness as well, so u might want to switch depending on the enemy. Front row tank need def buff since troops I'm making can hurts your actors asf (and I already planned one).

I want everyone in can do dps in frontline. Because if not, there will be only some characters that sit on the back without switching it. Also, I made front row get the chance of getting hits more often than the back row, so if you are nearing knocked out, might be wise to switch at the back, although AoE attack will still hits you

Forgot to put this, already tried in real practice and it wasn't bad. This is nearing pass the prototype phase and going to development phase soon

I wonder if there is an idea how to make enemy to counter this two row system. Like they would give effect that only affect back/front rows only / whatnot. So far I haven't had one

Logically speaking physical melee attacks would be hard to land on the back row but arrows or magic could be more likely.

Click to expand...

If I assume correctly, you're trying to say that melee attacker in back row would have low hit rate, i.e, have higher miss chance?

Also, currently enemies has no rows system. So it's only actor side system. The justification is the world set in a chaotic place, so enemies has little to no sense of strategy. Besides making enemy AI would be quite challenging.

Or a bomb that instakills if the party doesnt spit out enough damage fast enough.

Click to expand...

This is kind of punishing. Instant kill might be ok though, but as long as it can still being mitigated like you need to stun or remove a certain buff from the enemy. So it wont use special attack. But if it's because not fast enough, I don't think I'd make it

Reguarding the back row physical attacks i was talking about receiving physical attacks since there would be someone in the way. But it could be workable in the other direction too. Just as another way of defining what changes between the rows. For the characters

Reguarding te bomb i didnt explain the monster clearly enough it would be punishing but maybe not as much. Could be a countdown on the screen or x number of turns before the bomb blows. So the fight becomes a challenge of damage output rather than just keeping hp.

I might want to up this for some kind of feedback. I'm close to pass the prototyping phase and soon I'd like to get this moved to game in dev future, but not so soon.

Anyway, I'm planning on making a states information. Like basically tells the players what a state do to them. After watching some LPs and replayed my own game for after years, I realized that I can't really tell what these states do (I forgot what I did lol). Since I made the states name an unique one and not just plain and self explanatory like ATK down or DEF down.

Before we start, let me explain my UI I have
The last UI from my previous game and I'd like to copy in this project as well

If you pressed SHIFT, it would be displaying the skill info

In this project, I haven't implement it yet, but I plan to do the same. However I changed the free turn icon on the upper right into field effect name. since free turn icon is not really necessary.

So, basically SHIFT is reserved for skill information, and you can't display state information on the right side. Question is, how you make the player get the info about state information on the fly during the battle? I'm afraid if help window description enough would be sufficient to tell, so I was planning on something like this

I'm thinking of press a certain button when you target an enemy / ally and pops a window telling the states affecting them. And for the record, I don't have scan skill (and I don't like the concept of scan skill tbh).

Would that acceptable? Or any other approach? Like, pressing a certain button to display a popup telling a general / global battle situation like Enemy A or Actor A is under X state that reduce the damage? Or do you prefer a separate menu for information like adding a new menu in main menu that basically tells you everything about the game glossary?

Glossary can only be accessed at map screen. So it'd be less informative I suppose.
Imo the former is the better approach: showing the details on battle by pressing certain key (if the player choose to).
As the game focuses on battle mechanic, I think it's better to have the necessary informations on battle itself.

Around an hour of gameplay, including cut scenes, exploration, and battles

A basic proof of a concept of two rows battle system.

Two boss battles

A first few maps made in haste, it may change later to add more spices and flavors

A basic skill level up system. Some information might be inaccurate. It's hard to keep the track when you still change the skill balancing quite often

An introduction to the fourth character

An introduction to the world concept, The Void Rift

There is no much content to explore yet aside from the battle itself. I plan to add more features later.

Some resources are placeholder (such as NPC design and faceset), and will be replaced in later development

The project is unencrypted, and I will keep it like that. It's no shame, people are free to look at how I did the stuff or 'steal' my scripts. But keep it mind, some resources are reserved, especially the custom one

Bumping this thread up. After months of getting stuck because I have no idea on where to bring this game. I decided to rewrite almost everything that happened in the game. So in short, I managed to flesh out some new story scenarios that is not the same as previous demo.

So I'd just want to tell you that the old demo / build is likely to be irrelevant anymore. To avoid confusion, I'm taking down the old demo so it won't be spreading anymore. But if anyone still want the demo, you could PM me. However take any content in game demo with a grain of salt since there will be a major change later.

Again writing is not my forte, but I have decided to use this project as an exercise. And probably take much longer than my previous game to finish since the prequel has minimalistic story.

The battle system is pretty awesome! I'm waiting for the demo.
I've been following the Eremidia story since its RMVNs were still in rmid.
Going to miss those days, (Though most of the time, i'm a silent reader .lol)
keep it up!